What advice can you extract from the Zen of Python? How can these nineteen guiding principles help you write more idiomatic Python? This week on the show, Christopher Trudeau is here, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.

Christopher shares a Real Python tutorial by Bartosz Zaczyński titled “What’s the Zen of Python?” We talk about the poem’s origin and ways to access the Zen within Python. We also discuss how different sections provide contradictory advice for what makes good Python code.

We cover a recent post by previous guest Matt Harrison about using Python and pandas for finance. Matt’s article covers methods in the pandas library for aggregation, resampling, and rolling averages.

We cover several other articles and projects from the Python community, including staying up-to-date with news, solving a Legend of Zelda puzzle with Python, avoiding “simply” providing advice, displaying better stack traces, and creating files with fake data.

Course Spotlight: Speed Up Python With Concurrency

Learn what concurrency means in Python and why you might want to use it. You’ll see a simple, non-concurrent approach and then look into why you’d want threading, asyncio, or multiprocessing.

Topics:

  • 00:00:00 – Introduction
  • 00:01:49 – Python 3.11.4, 3.10.12, 3.9.17, 3.8.17, 3.7.17, and Python 3.12.0 beta 3 released
  • 00:02:24 – Enforcement of 2FA for PyPI Began June 1st
  • 00:02:54 – Faster Python 3.13 Plan
  • 00:03:14 – PyPy v7.3.12 Released
  • 00:03:28 – Migrate to .readthedocs.yaml Configuration
  • 00:05:14 – PyCon US 2023 and PyCascades 2023 Videos Are Up
  • 00:05:37 – What’s the Zen of Python?
  • 00:09:22 – Python for Finance: Pandas Resample, Groupby, and Rolling
  • 00:15:24 – Python and the Legend of Zelda
  • 00:17:47 – Don’t Say “Simply” Use Pyenv, Poetry or Anaconda
  • 00:28:54 – Is Parallel Programming Hard?
  • 00:40:54 – Video Course Spotlight
  • 00:42:20 – pymg: A Better Display for Stack Traces
  • 00:44:58 – faker-file: Create Files With Fake Data
  • 00:49:14 – Thanks and goodbye

News:

Topic Links:

  • What’s the Zen of Python? – In this tutorial, you’ll be exploring the Zen of Python, a collection of nineteen guiding principles for writing idiomatic Python. You’ll find out how they originated and whether you should follow them. Along the way, you’ll uncover several inside jokes associated with this humorous poem.
  • Python for Finance: Pandas Resample, Groupby, and Rolling – When working with time series data such as financial information, the resample, grouping, and rolling features of pandas can make your life easier.
  • Python and the Legend of Zelda – The Game Boy Color version of Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages contains a grid-based puzzle. Gaz writes about creating a brute-force program to solve the challenge using Python.
  • Don’t Say “Simply” Use Pyenv, Poetry or Anaconda – This article talks about the issues that newer Python coders might encounter by adopting more complicated package management mechanisms and explains why sticking with pip is often the better choice.

Discussion:

Projects:

Additional Links:

Level up your Python skills with our expert-led courses:

Support the podcast & join our community of Pythonistas